The future of corporate city centers
The pandemic has caused business-corporate city centers to freeze up. Employees, along with remote work, have been diverted from their offices to their homes. The new work model may affect the design of spaces. Indeed, it turns out that city centers have seen buildings and spaces that no one wants to use. As Jola Starzak notes, dividing cities by function: living, working, entertainment simply doesn't work. This situation may convince skeptics that combining functions, hybridizing cities is the future of planning. There is, of course, the question of what remote work should look like. After all, we are herd animals and need contact. This highlights even more clearly the need for change and for the market to open up to new forms of habitation.
left: Jola Starzak, right: the audience
photo: Maciej Zakrzewski
Pandemic also showed us how important green areas are the city's lungs - they are the ones that really count, not square meters of glass office buildings. And don't forget that if part of our lives are to move online, we need not only ICT facilities, but also energy facilities, and as Edwin Bendyk warns, a crisis lurks on the horizon here. Some are already thinking about change - the French in the Paris metropolitan area, as part of the Biorégion Ile-de-France 2050 program, are betting on self-sufficiency and urban densification, so that they will be able to provide their residents with an adequate amount of food and energy.
A warm-up before a bigger crisis?
The pandemic has unfortunately shown that the fear of contagion is stronger than the desire to live green. We abandoned public transportation in favor of cars or were much more willing to use disposable and plastic items. As Piotr Juskowiak notes, those smartest cities have been building and supporting their sustainable mobility for years. Oslo is betting on neutralizing its carbon footprint, Copenhagen on bicycle transportation. However, these are all new issues that we are just learning. And this is one of the tasks of smart cities - to share knowledge, learn from each other and wisely adapt best practices according to needs and opportunities. We must also not forget that cities are not a stagnant structure that must remain as it is with all its shortcomings: with cars, low-quality greenery and public spaces. Cities are, after all, systems constantly adapting to the conditions they find, but also a system of interconnected vessels. Jola Starzak sees great potential in local networks of connections and empty spaces. And she gives the example of the RotterZwam oyster farm, which grows on coffee grounds from nearby cafes, and is located in a... a former aquapark in Rotterdam. The pandemic for the cities may thus be a training exercise before the bigger challenges they will soon face. Declarations of action have already been made in Milan and Athens, among others. The capital of Lombardy wants to turn some car roads into bicycle paths and sidewalks by the end of the summer.
Piotr Juskowiak
Photo: Maciej Zakrzewski
post-pandemic smart city
It seems that a smart city should learn from its pandemic experience. Use not only technology, but also the energy and capabilities of its residents. There are also many challenges for smart cities: finding new sources of self-sufficiency, developing resources and reorganizing functions. The dynamically changing reality means that smart cities are being replaced by resilient cities. The moment has come for resilient cities to exercise their imagination, because there may no longer be enough resources to return to the normalcy we know.
